


how I wish our last time wasn't really our last

by onceuponawar



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Critical Role episode 30, also I could tag this as nearly every ship in the fandom, oh you thought being emo about Molly hours were over? think again, there’s hints for everyone if you’re into that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 19:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19933441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponawar/pseuds/onceuponawar
Summary: The second day dawns. Beau’s neck hurts from the way she slept against the window of the carriage.Yasha is gone. Again.It’s not like she expected much less. But maybe she hoped, just the slightest bit, that they could all scream and mourn together and forgo the storm chasing, if even for a day....(The Mighty Nein’s breaking and binding in the wake of Mollymauk Tealeaf, and their reflections on the road back to Zadash)





	how I wish our last time wasn't really our last

**Author's Note:**

> This fic follows each of the Nein's thoughts in the weeklong trip from Shady Creek Run back to Zadash in episode 30. Yes, I have been writing this since the night that episode aired. I have procrastination issues. 
> 
> Comments are always, always, always appreciated. You can leave me other writing requests on my tumblr: @naturalnein (I promise I'll be faster than I was with the completion of this one)

The second day dawns. Beau’s neck hurts from the way she slept against the window of the carriage.

****

Yasha is gone. Again.

****

It’s not like she expected much less. Beau has never had friends—not before the man sleeping across from her, that is, not before the people in the cart outside—but she can only imagine losing one that you’d had for a long time would hurt like hell. Hurt enough to scream and mourn and chase the nearest storm.

****

It’s not like she expected much less. But maybe she hoped, just the slightest bit, that they could all scream and mourn together and forgo the storm chasing, if even for a day.

****

Beau doesn’t know what kind of comfort Yasha finds in the thunder, or anything of the deity that beckons from them. She’s not religious, not beyond what they instilled in her at the monastery. There’s never been a god or goddess, not one she’s heard of at least, that she’d want to have authority over her. It’s just a matter of principal: she is done having her life in someone else’s hands. No one controls Beau but Beau. 

****

So really there’s a thousand reasons why she could never possibly understand Yasha’s purpose, Yasha’s faith,  _ Yasha _ .

****

But as the sun cracks over the horizon, the grave of Mollymauk Tealeaf now miles behind them, Yasha Nydoorin one with the passing storms in the east, Beau prays. It’s clumsy, it’s apparent she’s not a woman of the gods, but it’s a prayer all the same. To whoever is listening. She just wants Yasha to be okay, in time, and to come back to them. She wants all of her new friends to be okay. Fuck, she herself wants to be okay. It’s such a small request, surely—

****

Caleb stirs, eyes closed when he clutches at his cloak, just startling awake from sleep.

****

Beau unfolds her clasped hands before he can see her, ignoring the flush of embarrassment rising her cheeks—like she was caught doing something she shouldn’t have, which she  _ wasn’t _ —and pretends to be asleep. It’s such a stupid thing anyway, she backpedals, to talk to immortal beings in the sky who don’t give a shit about you. 

****

Fuck all of them, Beau has done just fine on her own thus far. She’ll make sure her friends are okay all by herself.

****

… 

****

The third day dawns. Nott didn’t sleep, tucked into a fetal position staring up into the vast ink-black sky, now fading to the pinks and oranges of morning.

****

Fjord and Caduceus join her and Jester in the cart at night and it’s overcrowded—really firbolgs are taller than any creature should be, who needs that much leg length? It’s unsettling—but Nott doesn’t really mind. She enjoys it just a bit, if she’s honest. It makes it easier to watch over them all at once.

****

She’d been fine sleeping in Caleb’s hut two nights ago, with comfy pillows and blankets and the knowledge that their captured friends were alive and safe; the knowledge that they were all going to be alive and safe by morning with all of the spells he had set in place to protect them. On the open road it feels different. Caleb is a full carriage ahead of them, further away than she’d ever want him to be, and the illusion spell on the cart feels feeble in comparison to any of his amazing tricks.

****

So Nott stays awake, watching over her remaining companions. 

****

In the very beginning, Caleb had been nothing to her but an unlikely acquaintance. A strange, lost man who could be of use to her. They were comrades by convenience and convenience only, until the day where Nott woke early to find him sleeping with a book covering his face and Frumpkin curled into his side and she realized she would give her life for him. It had been that easy.

****

And now, months later, she’s watching herself give in to the same vulnerabilities. She’s watching herself begin to love these new friends she’s made. Even Mr. Clay, who is weird and makes tea out of dead people, but still risked his life to rescue Jester and Fjord and Yasha, people he didn’t even know. Just as Caleb had become in an instant, they’re all Nott’s family now. They’re  _ Nott’s _ . Which means she isn’t going to let bald, floating fuck-faces ever take them again.

****

She won’t lose another.

****

Maybe they had never gotten along all that well. Mollymauk had been a condescending ass to her, she’d been snarky bitch in return. They were the two that couldn’t fit together just right. But death glorifies life. She sees that now, in every single one of her friends, conveniently forgetting all of his less admirable traits in favor of the kinder ones. Nott doesn’t forget, but she forgives, and that’s the closest she’s going to get to closure. She does see now that maybe, just maybe, eventually, she could’ve found a friend in Molly.

****

Molly, who had the world tell him—her? them? she wishes she’d had the time to get that right—that he had to be something, had to find the person he’d been before he’d awoken in his own grave, and completely ignored it. She had pushed him to find those memories, because she couldn’t imagine not having a tether, not having a Luc or a Yeza to tie you to the earth. But at the same time she was in awe of the way he could simply not care about the past at all. The way he could move on and not let it define him.

****

Goblins weren’t creatures of attachment. And how could she ever be a goblin, how could this ever be the body she was supposed to hold, when she stays awake to make sure her friends can sleep sound and cries for the dead and keeps Keg’s messily scrawled letter tucked next to her heart?

****

Nott would give up a lot, to have things be different. To forget, like Molly could, to change, like she was sure Caleb could do for her if he just got a little bit stronger. But she would never, ever have anything be different about these friendships she’s formed. She loves them and she isn’t afraid of that, not like the goblins in her clan had been. Not like Caleb continued to be. This attachment was perfectly fine with her, despite what either of them thought. 

****

Maybe Molly had taught her something through all the bickering and the animosity. Sometimes, it’s okay to let the past go. Nott has survived more than a lifetime’s worth of pain and carried it with her all across Wildemount. It’s not a betrayal if she sets it down, if only for a time. She’ll find her husband and she’ll find her son, there’s no question. But for now there are other people that need her  _ here _ , people that can be ripped from her as quickly as Yeza and Luc and Molly. This is what matters: the cart around and the carriage ahead and the dirt road beneath

****

The sun becomes visible over the trees at last, bathing the campsite in a golden glow. Caduceus peeks an eye open and stretches out. Jester hums softly in her sleep, Fjord a little closer to her than he’d been the night before.

****

Nott breathes out a sigh. Yeah, this is what matters.

****

She lets herself sleep at last.

****

… 

****

The fourth day dawns. Fjord’s ears are ringing from the sound of explosives being shot into the sky and he’s been watching them, transfixed, since night fell. It’s not like he would’ve slept anyway. 

****

Ophelia and her party had decided to skirt around Hupperdook on their travel back to Zadash to avoid attention, but they had stopped close enough that the revelry could still be heard as loud and as clear as if they were standing in the middle of it all. 

****

Fjord can almost perfectly imagine being back inside those walls himself. It feels like months ago, but he knows it could only be two weeks at most. They all had been so carefree, drinking for sport and dancing like children. He’d retired early, being so unbridled wasn’t something he was used to, but he’d felt the swell of pride with victory just the same. He’d gotten sick in the water closet upstairs, but it was fine because—

****

His eyes squeeze shut, trying to physically shut out the memory. A chill runs across his arms. He’d avoided it all this time, washed it in self-loathing, to think about  _ him _ now, Fjord thinks it may tear him apart.

****

The memory comes all the same.

****

It was fine because  _ Molly _ had half-carried him back to their room. Because Molly could not stop smiling when Fjord drunkenly asked if he puked on him, and eventually neither of them had been able to breathe, doubled over with laughter. Because he hadn’t ended the night alone, after so long without a friend by his side.

****

They were all idiots.  _ He _ was an idiot.

****

Within a matter of days, he, Jester and Yasha would be bound and gagged in the back of a slaver’s cart and Mollymauk would be dead. 

****

He’d let his guard down. For the first time since his ship had exploded, for the first time since he found himself washed ashore with dreams of an all-seeing yellow eye. Because of it, he’d let all of his new friends down, people who trusted him and still seemed to trust him; though he can’t possibly imagine why, when his job had been to protect and he couldn’t even fucking do that. 

****

Because of it, Molly had died. Molly, who had roomed with him without fail. Molly, who seemed to never cease his endless chatter until the nights where he’d simply sit and watch Fjord clean the Falchion in perfectly silent, awed concentration. Molly, who was an enigma Fjord would never get the chance to fully comprehend. Molly, who gave his life trying to save him, trying to save all of them, when if Fjord had just paid a little bit more attention—

****

Another explosion goes off, bringing in the colors of the morning. Fjord opens his eyes. 

****

He needs to find Sabian. He needs the truth. He needs to understand, after all this time.

****

The coast is beckoning him, as it always is. He hears it echoing in his dreams, the crash of waves luring him home. The past is calling his name, the thread is right there—a horse that could carry him all the way to Nicodranas before anyone would know he was gone—all he has to do is pull. 

****

But Fjord’s a smarter man now than when he first ventured out to sea, he knows pulling would only unravel everything, and he doesn’t have all that much thread left in the first place. So he’ll wait. He’ll bear the somber days ahead, he’ll focus on the task at hand, and with any luck he’ll banish his thoughts of Mollymauk Tealeaf.

****

These people need him. He won’t let them down again.

****

… 

****

The fifth day dawns. Yasha prowls and she grieves. 

****

She doesn’t know where she is. But it’s not Xhorhas, it’s not before the grave of the only friend she’s ever known, and that’s all that seems to fucking matter.

****

A storm rumbles behind her, giving direction. It’s the only time she’s been thankful for it. She’ll train for the Storm Lord, she’ll slay for him, as she’s indebted to do. But only this time has it felt less like a debt and more like a salvation. A beautiful and glorious distraction, leading her to absolutely nowhere at all.

****

Further east. Lightning cracks at her back. She hears nothing, feels nothing. Not as she trudges ahead, not as she slays another of her deity’s foes, not as she scrubs it’s blood from her skin. Not as lightning cracks and the Storm Lord’s rumbling voice echoes through her mind:  _ A job well done, my Orphan Maker. I shall call on you again.  _

****

No, not until the storm is gone and her rage fades does Yasha feel anything at all. She feels lost and she feels lonely, sensations scarier than any beast her deity could conjure. There’s a piece of her missing, a piece violet and vital and she  _ feels _ it, as though someone had taken her very heart, gnarled and tainted as it had been.

****

It happened again. 

****

There had never been any promise that it wouldn’t—she and Molly had been long past handing out promises they knew couldn’t be kept—but she’d expected to have him longer. He had this air of confidence about him that could trick anyone into thinking he was invincible. Even she, sometimes. Even she, who’d been the one to find him shivering in a ditch, without so much as his own name. He made it so easy to forget that seeing his coat blowing on a twig in the wind had knocked her reality sideways, until she had no perception of anything but  _ forward  _ and  _ away _ .

****

She remembers the weight of Jester and Beau’s hands on her shoulders. She remembers feeling a tear drip onto her back, and wondering what Beau must look like when she cried. She remembers Jester and Fjord calling out to her, and how she couldn’t even turn to see their faces when she said she needed time. She remembers Molly’s voice in her head as she followed the storm, repeating over and over:  _ go back _ and  _ you need them _ and  _ don’t do this to yourself _ .

****

But Molly is dead. The only friend she’d ever had. The only person who could make her forget about what she’d lost: both the woman and the memories. The only person since Zuala who’d looked twice, who hadn’t stared at her, but  _ through _ her, and seen who she was underneath the scowl and the stoicism. The voice in her head that sounds like his is a ghost.

****

Emptiness. That’s what Molly said he felt when he crawled from his own grave. Yasha thinks it’s what she feels now, sunlight pouring over the tops of the trees.

****

She receives Jester’s message. Finding her bearings and walking to Zadash in a few days time is something she knows she could do. But then she imagines the faces of her new acquaintances as they’d been back at Molly’s grave and she realizes she can’t face them yet. Not their pity or their kindness. 

****

This burden, her best friend’s ghost, his life, his memory, she’ll bear alone. It won’t be the first time.

****

The sun rises. Yasha stands and lets the Storm Lord guide her steps into the unknown.

****

… 

****

The sixth day dawns. Jester does her best to find beauty in the colors of the morning.

****

They blend together in the sky as easily as her paints, and if she looks hard enough she can see the story they’re trying to tell. The pinks remind her of Caduceus’s fur, the yellows of the flowers she’d bought and woven into everyone’s hair back in Hupperdook, the reds of her mother’s soft skin. It’s effortlessly pretty, in a way only nature can master.

****

Quietly, she opens her journal to tell the Traveler all of this, all of the lovely things she can still manage to find despite the fact she’d been struggling a little more to smile lately, but she barely opens a page before she  _ remembers _ . And promptly slams it shut. 

****

Nott stirs. Jester sombers and swallows the hot lump in her throat.

****

The Traveller probably didn’t care anyway. She always used to think that she knew exactly who he was: her god, her companion, her best friend. But now she doesn’t know anything. She hasn’t known anything about him since she was bound and gagged and praying in a slaver’s basement, tears spilling down her cheeks as she listened to her new friend be tortured. And he didn’t come.

****

Jester thinks that maybe she is sad.

****

She doesn’t want to be, it’s everyone else who’s sad. Caleb and Beau keep to themselves in the carriage ahead; Nott reads and rereads Keg’s letter, messing with her gunpowder with an obsessive amount of focus; Fjord broods and barely sleeps; Caduceus, well, he’s as pensive as ever. They all smile tight-lipped and unconvincing and Jester  _ hates  _ it. She wants to make them happy, she wants to be happy for them, but how can she do that if not even she is happy in the first place?

****

Molly could’ve done it, she knows. Forced a blush up Caleb’s neck, argued with Beau until she had no more quips except “Fuck you, Molly” with a coy smile on her lips, said something so ridiculous that Nott had no choice but to laugh, pulled Fjord out of his head just by sitting and watching and who knows, probably could’ve piqued the curiosity of Caduceus, too. Jester wishes she knew how he did it, if the fact he couldn’t remember anything but the past two years freed all that space in his mind to be filled with joy and ease.

****

She won’t get the chance to ask, she knows, and that is maybe the scariest part. He’d died perhaps not twenty feet from her and she hadn’t  _ felt  _ anything. All she’d heard was the yelling and the sounds of battle from inside the cart. She’d scraped her manacles against the iron cage, screamed through her gag, but nothing seemed to be enough to get someone to just  _ hear  _ her,  _ help  _ her. She could have healed him, could have done something, anything. 

****

Jester had never had any friends before she met him in that bar, except for Fjord and Beau. He’d been charming and caring an absolute  _ ass  _ sometimes, but she’s pretty sure that’s what half of being a friend is about. She needed more time with him to really know either way, but time is a gift not even the Traveler can give back to her.

****

Her eyes water, her hands shake. She locks her knees to her chest, afraid of someone waking and seeing that her cheeks are growing plum-colored with all of this unwanted emotion welling up in the hollow parts of her.

****

Jester wants to make her friends laugh. She wants to be a seed of chaos, the kind the Traveler loves so much. She wants Molly to push aside the dirt he’s under, put on his coat, and make their lives a little brighter again.

****

She just wants to be  _ happy _ . Even if she has to fake it. 

****

Tricksters are the best liars, Jester knows this well.

****

She releases her clenched fists, tips her head back, and breathes deeply until the tears reside. When her friends begin to sit up and rub their tired eyes, none of them will be able to tell how close she was to losing herself.

****

It’s better that way. Happy Jester is the one everyone needs, so that is the Jester she will be.

… 

****

(Evening sets on the sixth day. Caduceus prays to the Wildmother, giving thanks for another waning sun.

****

She tells him that following this path will lead him to what he seeks. He never had any doubts.

****

The people he’s met are strange, but fate bends around them as easy as air. It’s undeniable that they were the ones destined to wander through his graveyard. Their strange is of a different kind, the kind Caduceus sees less often, the kind that tells him that history has its eyes on them. It’s eyes on him, now, too.

****

It’s all very new and exciting.

****

The travelling group is coming close to the outskirts of Zadash. In another day or so, perhaps even by morning, if the trees in the grove where they’ve parked to rest for the night are to be trusted. He’s never been to a city so large before, but he’s read enough to know that there’s a lot less appreciation for nature in its inhabitants. They don’t love his matron the way he does. They fear her power in the way a minnow may fear an expanse of sea. They need it, but it’s depths scare them, so they stay clustered in their busy little cities, hoping they never have to see what lies beyond.

****

No matter his disdain, he’s pleased to have a guide in the ash-skinned tiefling woman and his new companions. They seem to have at least an inkling of knowledge as to what’s going to happen once they’re on the inside. Caduceus is not privy to the same information, but he’s happy to trail along where his destiny leads. 

****

It is as the Wildmother wills, and so it will be.)

****

.

****

The seventh day dawns. Zadash awaits, and Caleb really just wants some paper.

****

There’s many sensations nagging at the back of his skull, eating away at his dwindling sanity, but he’s become an excellent compartmentalizer. First comes Ophelia, then the paper, and the rest? Right now, it doesn’t matter. There’s a task at hand.

****

This methodology, tried and true, gets him through an anticipatory morning, where Beau stirs and fidgets on her designated side of the space, waiting to be free from the carriage’s imposed confines. She’s been waking before him most mornings—or perhaps she hasn’t been sleeping at all? Her undereyes are dark enough for this theory to hold weight—and Caleb has caught her more than once with her hands clasped, whispers on her lips. But who in the pantheon would a woman like Beauregard possibly be praying to? The Knowing Mistress of her monastery? Surely not with—

****

_ Focus _ , he chastises himself. It’s approximately one in the afternoon, and Ophelia’s party has finally found itself before the northern gates of Zadash. If he is wise about his time, and he always is, he may even be able to replenish his spell components before the day is through.

****

With perfect composition, he seems to stride through the buzzing metropolis and into the presence of The Gentleman without full range of his own thought. For once, the talking is not his burden. Ophelia announces them, confirms the completion of their mission, makes it known they deserve their coin, for they paid in blood. It’s eloquently put, Caleb will give her that much. He doesn’t even speak until the tabaxi comes asking after Lucien, and he lies to her with the same ease in which he breathes.

****

_ Mollymauk _ , the cacophony locked away in his mind screams out,  _ his name was Mollymauk _ .  _ He shed his old names and this old life you cling to. He lived free, I beg of you to let him remain the same in death _ .

****

But saying such things would be preposterous. Illogical. And Caleb is nothing if not logical. 

****

It is by that same token he knows he is projecting his own misfortunes onto the misfortunes of a dead man. Old names, old lives, Caleb had always assumed that was his schick. Mollymauk had gone and proven him otherwise, and then he had gone and died. In his wake existed a limbo where Caleb knows how he would wish for his companions to handle Eodwulf or,  _ Gott bewahre _ , Astrid, but he is incapable of knowing how Mollymauk would want  _ his  _ old friends dealt with.

****

So, he lies.

****

_ Mollymauk had been a terrible liar _ .

****

He needs a drink.

****

He assuredly pushes his way to the open bar, ignores Caduceus’s first sip of milk, immediately followed by his first sip of whiskey, and asks the bartender to give him the strongest drink he has. The man looks wearily over Caleb’s appearance: the tangled hair, the scruffy beard, the worn and dirty cloak. He makes it clear that Caleb is just the type of man he’d expect to drown his sorrows in drink. But this man seems so irrelevant, after the month he and his companions have had. He hadn’t had the time to bathe, not since they left Zadash. He’s still covered in an uncomfortable sweat from the weeklong carriage ride, dust from Lorenzo’s basement, mud from Shady Creek Run, Mollymauk’s blood—

****

Caleb throws back a shot, barely flinching before grabbing an ale and starting work on that, too.

****

The alcohol is searing, and successfully breaks down the last of the compartmentalization he’d carefully set in place this morning. Through a haze he thinks that perhaps he should leave the paper for another day. Paper seems so trite when he could be dead. They all could be, but here they are: drinking in the Evening Nip’s covert underground bar, home of motley mercenaries and whoever the hell Lucien once was.

****

Tankard still firmly grasped in his hand, Caleb swivels away from any judgemental barkeeps. After only a moment of searching, his eyes land on Fjord, alone in a back booth. He’s not at all engaged in the revelry, with the exception of a single bottle he nurses. Caleb is met with the sudden urge to vent all of these unwanted feelings to someone, and the half-orc is arguably the least occupied. He stumbles across the room and lands across from him in the booth. In moments, Beauregard throws herself down with them, and suddenly they’re banded together here in the darkest corner, as survivors of an even darker road.

****

Or maybe Caleb just thinks this because he snatched another tankard off an empty table on the way over here, and it’s already a quarter of the way empty.

****

“This may be- uh- the alcohol,” he apologizes in advance, then quickly amends himself: “It’s the alcohol… raise a glass, you two assholes. Here is to fucking making it work.”

****

Even if they don’t feel the heavy importance of this moment, they indulge him a toast. “Cheers,” Fjord says, eagerly tipping back his drink.

****

“Congratulations on being alive.”

****

They all mutter agreements, nearly drifting back into their own heads and sorrows before Beau pipes up, voice full of faux airiness.

****

“Fjord, you survived being chained up and tortured. That’s got to fuck with a person, right?”

****

Caleb may have had more tact, but his curiosity was getting the better of him, too. He hadn’t seen Fjord or Jester at all since they began their journey home, and therefore hadn’t had the chance to pull information out of either of them. It nags at him like an unreachable itch, the unknown.

****

“Yeah it—” Fjord sighs. “More the disappointment. I expect better of myself. I let you guys down, I let Jester down, I let Yasha down. I’ll never be able to shake this.”

****

The honesty in which he says it, like he’s sharing the weight of an irremovable burden, makes Caleb ill. How could he ever think himself responsible for something so wholly out of his control? He opens his mouth to speak, but Beau beats him to the words.

****

“Fjord, you cannot keep blaming yourself when you were the victim in this circumstance. You understand that, right?”

****

“No. I don’t.”

****

“There are people to blame. I wasn’t joking when I said it was someone’s fault earlier, but it is not yours. The only person whose fucking fault it was is that fucking asshole Lorenzo’s and… fucking… human traffickers.”

****

Fjord responds with some kind of concession, but all Caleb can hear is Beau saying a version of the same things to him, when he told her about what he’d done to his family.  _ Mutter und Vater _ . Could it be the ale or could it be that’s Fjord’s senseless self hatred is akin to his own? Is he projecting onto live men now, too?

****

“You cannot blame yourself when you are taken advantage of,” Caleb finally says. The words come slowly, he is admitting something to both Fjord and himself. “You know what I mean?”

****

Fjord counters quickly, the words spilling out of him as though he had them lying in wait on the tip of his tongue. “You don’t understand though. My whole life was trying to blend in, trying to keep an eye out for someone that was looking to take advantage, that was going to exploit. I got comfortable, I felt relaxed. There’s no reason why the three of us out on watch couldn’t see them coming out and raise an alarm fast enough.”

****

“There’s also no reason that the three of us couldn’t have made a fucking plan that couldn’t have gotten Molly killed,” Beau says without heat, and  _ there it is _ .

****

Caleb’s drunkenness wants them to settle it right here. Molly’s death has brought all of their old issues to the surface, and it simmers like a pot of water over fire. They’re a fucked up group: thieves and outcasts and arsonists with deep-rooted trauma and foggy memories and no clear direction. They all need a little therapy, but Beau has touched a nerve here. If Caleb can get she and Fjord to be honest for once, maybe—

****

“I’ll drink to that,” Fjord relents, and the topic dies with the release of tension from his shoulders.

****

“No,” Caleb jumps before the thread is lost entirely, “and we’re never going to forget it. It’s going to ride with us until we’re dead.”

****

Fjord says, “Yeah. It puts everything into perspective though, I’ll tell you that much.” And takes another swig from his bottle.

****

“Yeah, those things don’t go away, you carry that shit with you.” Caleb murmurs.

****

With a nod of acknowledgement, Fjord admits, “I was floating around, trying to find my way to the Cerberus. I don’t know if that’s what I want to do anymore.”

****

“What do you want to do?” Beau prompts. She’s kicked back now, arms resting on the top of the booth. This conversation doesn’t appear to mean as much to her as it does to Caleb. He debates within himself for a moment, then decides that probably makes her the better person.

****

Fjord hesitates, oblivious, then exhales audibly. “I felt like I almost died and I hadn’t taken care of any of the shit that got me here in the first place. I was so worried about trying to learn about these new abilities that— I felt like I got distracted. I have people I want to find and things I want to remedy.”

****

And oh, how Caleb wants to pry at that. What people does a washed-up man like Fjord have left to seek out? To make amends with? What piece of that shipwreck is he clinging to so tightly he couldn’t die with it? These questions prick at the forefront of his mind, and he remembers a distant lesson.  _ This is how you learn who you’re dealing with: find their weaknesses first, and their strengths second _ . He opens his mouth to speak, but only a small noise escapes before Beau is sitting up straighter and changing the conversation.

****

She asks about Jester, how she coped, and Caleb listens to this closely, too. When Fjord tells of their teifling’s ceaseless joy, even while bound and gagged, and the perplexity of it, Caleb takes a pause. The three of them are turned in the corner booth now, eyeing Jester across the bar. She is somehow dancing, despite the fact that there’s no music playing, only the sound of low chatter. And while it is ridiculous, Caleb also finds it incredibly sad. How tired she must be, he thinks, from carrying that joy’s weight.

****

“I think it is an act,” he says, but neither Fjord nor Beauregard really listens. They are too caught in her orbit, too close to see the strings that keep her mask tied tight. And for now, that’s okay. Their ignorance is not tonight’s fight.

****

Caduceus lands at their table moments later, breaking their collective stupor. Looming and swaying, he babbles on about the drinks he’s had, how  _ terrible  _ they all seemed to be. Caleb makes a joke, it doesn’t land flat. His companions even  _ laugh _ . Beau calls Nott and Jester over, and now they’re all crammed in this booth decidedly not made to fit six people, but for once none of them seem to mind. Caleb teases Jester about her lack of drinking habits, throws in a compliment, pulls a smile from her. A genuine one. Caduceus begs to drink something good, and they launch from a plan to visit the bakery, to a plan to visit the smut shop, to a plan to visit the bathhouse— _ for Molly _ , repeats in his head, _ for Molly _ —in a matter of seconds.

****

And because the alcohol likes toasts, so does Caleb in this moment. He asks again for everyone to raise their glasses, filled with ale and milk and otherwise, and asks for a cheers. Not to freedom, but to Mollymauk Tealeaf.

****

_ Hear, hear _ , is their rallying cry. And it brings him hope.

****

There’s brief talk of what comes after this. Pumat’s, the cloven crystal, Ionos, but it’s lighthearted. Beau calls him a good friend, and though Caleb stays composed, he feels as though when he stands his feet may not touch the ground. Nott declares that they get out of this place, but stops by The Gentleman once more to ask after the woman from the letter, Avantika. She is drunk, even by Nott-typical standards, and makes a total mess of the thing. Soon, laughing out of sheer embarrassment, they’re all shuffling out of the booth and up the stairwell once more.

****

Looking assuredly like idiots of the highest order, they venture away from the Evening Nip, drunken and contented. Beau brazenly begins lighting spare cherry bombs and lobbing them at the party. 

****

“For Molly!” She yells, and as fireworks begin to burst in the center of the street, Caleb thinks that maybe, just maybe, they’re all going to be okay.


End file.
